Topic: Midnight Blunders (1936) - Monte Collins & Tom Kennedy

[Paul Pain]

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138610/

The short entitled MIDNIGHT BLUNDERS is the original that was later revamped into SWEET SPIRITS OF NIGHTER with El Brendel and Tom Kennedy a few years later.  This is a rare case of a non-Stooges Columbia short in which a remake was made with one of the actors being the same in the remake.  Sure, there are Shemp and Joe shorts that are remakes of Curly and Shemp shorts, but Tom Kennedy is oddly the big buffoon in both the original and the remake.

In this short, Monte and Tom feel like a real comedy team with Monte as the sharper, but still stupid, leader, and, although he didn't, here he could have slapped Tom and still felt credible.  From start to finish, Monte feels natural in his role and delivers a great performance.  But, there's a reason for this: Monte co-authored the story for this short.  Even if no Moe Howard, Monte, despite rarely being credited, did do a lot of behind the scenes work.  Here, the result is great.  Just watch that opening scene, especially with the shot of the crimes happening along the street while Tom and Monte complain about the lack of crime, and know you're in for a good time.

Tom is always Tom: a dependable bumbling idiot.  Here, he makes a wonderful victim for Monte's insults and own brand of stupidity.  He goes along with the rest of that cast that is highlighted by Harry Semels as the wooden-legged Chinese scientist hellbent on world domination.

Yes, the short is blatantly in the times with the scenes of Monte and Tom traveling through Chinatown with the typical old warhorse types of gags picking on people's appearance and grasp of the English language.  The delivery of these gags is with perfect timing, and everything is given just the right amount of attention.  Perhaps what makes it all funny is that they found all these East Asian actors to play these bit roles, but the villain of the short is the only Chinese character not played by an Asian.

The Tiny Lipson monster is another Columbia standard fare with a mix between a Duke York special and the alcoholic gorilla from A BIRD IN THE HEAD.  There's nothing to complain about with that at all.  Phyllis Crane is wonderful eye candy and on the receiving end of a bad joke when Tom and Monte find her, but her role is just for her scream and be eye candy.

We got ourselves a decent scare comedy with which to close out October, and to make it better we got a good quality reel for this one.

9/10

[Umbrella Sam]

This actually may be a rare case where I prefer the remake to the original, which is strange to say considering the remake stars El Brendel. What makes it even stranger is that I feel like I should prefer this short. The production values are higher, there’s actual background music, the monster looks more terrifying (especially at the end when it shows its skeleton) and there are some really good ideas here; I like the idea of hitting every passerby in the leg to find who has a wooden leg, and the idea of mixing up the cat signal is good as well.

So why don’t I prefer this? I think part of it is the initial exposition where they introduce the villain; in the sense that it’s really boring and feels like it goes on forever. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the scientists in the remake, but at least their parts diminish quickly. The same applies to the cat signal part; it starts off great with Monte and Tom bumping into each other, but after that, the timing feels off and it gets stale pretty quick. Possibly one of the big reasons I don’t like it as much is the whole Chinatown aspect, and I’m not entirely certain why it bothers me. Like Paul said, most of the actual Chinese people here are not portrayed as villains, and heck, even one of the guys gets a nice dig at Monte for his horrible attempt at communicating. I think the reason why I have an issue with it is just the idea of Monte and Tom specifically targeting innocent Chinese people when it comes to hitting their legs. Compare that to Keaton’s THE CAMERAMAN or Langdon’s FEET OF MUD. Yeah, you could maybe argue that those are more racist, but Keaton and Langdon are basically just getting caught up in the antics surrounding them; they’re not actively going out of their way to attack every Chinese person they see, which is exactly what happens here. Even when Monte and Tom attack a cop by mistake, the cop just immediately blames the Chinese person. Like I said, I think the idea of attacking people’s legs until they find the wooden one is a very funny idea, but specifically targeting Chinese people only kind of kills it for me. But again, I can still see arguments for it not actually being that bad. We do often have to keep in mind the times when watching these shorts, but every now and then, there’s a case where the stereotypes are too much and ruin the films for me. I can get past the stereotypes in THE CAMERAMAN and FEET OF MUD and still enjoy them. For whatever reason, in MIDNIGHT BLUNDERS, I can’t.